Two reviews of PC-BSD 1.4. The first one concludes: " If you are a new user, there is everything here for you; equally so if you are an experienced techie you can get into the FreeBSD ports tree and compile to your hearts content. Something for everyone here, no matter their level of knowledge or expertise."The second one: "PC-BSD is an extremely user friendly and secure BSD, based on the rock solid FreeBSD 6.2 stable core, with a easy to use package management system, a friendly installation GUI and great hardware recognition. It is easy enough for average users and interesting enough for advanced users."

No, because if someone has compiled it from hand to work with a particular version of Ubuntu then ether they know the dependencies are in the Ubuntu repositories or will let you know to add their repository to get the dependencies you need.

Bravo !

So you see, it is beginning to become more complicated than simply "get and click on a .deb" ;-)

For you first idea, I have to manually collect several different .deb, be sure they do not conflict with older or newer versions of the ones already installed on my system, etc.

For your second idea, I have to update my source.list file in order to install only one software... hey, by the way, it conflicts with what you said as now you tell us to use a network repository and apt :-)

Only if you want to install Deb files which most regular users will never do.

Just like most regular users will never use the ports system in PCBSD but it's there if you want to use it.

But if you are a regular user in Ubuntu you can go to the add and remove software icon, search for almost any linux software that will run on Ubuntu, choose and install. You can choose one thing or 10 things! And from then on out it will be auto updated.

Also if you download Deb's in Ubuntu and run one it will tell you if there are any issues, if it's just a matter of an older version or different version of an application or the same application, it will tell you and then will ask you if you want to uninstall the old one and install the new one. No big deal.

Also it does not conflict with what I said. The person I was answering said that he hated being stuck with what was in UBUNTUs repositories. I never said that using Deb files didn't require APT. I said they let you go outside of Ubuntu repositories.

In PCBSD you have to go through their site, find the current version of the software you want on their site, download it and run it. One at a time. They do have an update program that you can turn on for auto updates but i am not sure if it updates applications. Also a lot of the applications on the site are out of date.

And boy if you have to set up a new machine and you have a lot of software to install APT is a god send! I can take a list of all the aps I have on my machine and then on a new machine run apt against that and it will do all the installs for me. I don't have to search for nothing. I can rollout a hundred machines and make them all the same with one command and just let it roll. Don't have to baby sit. Can you do that with Windows, Mac OS or PCBSD. Nooooo. To do that on Windows you will need Zen Works, SMS or Mirimba. (And making packages on any of those can take forever, if you can even do it cause it's a PAIN in the azz. At least it's easy to make PBI's)

No such system to quickly do that on the Mac or PCBSD. Will have to compile all the software and install it one by one, by hand on each machine. Hummmmmm!

you wrote: No such system to quickly do that on the Mac or PCBSD. Will have to compile all the software and install it one by one, by hand on each machine.

For deploying a large number of installations you can create packages on a single box and roll them out to the rest. There are lots of additional strategies for deploying installations depending on your environment..

I don't think anyone is trying to sell packages, ports, or PBIs as an identical replacement to apt. If you're happy with Ubuntu/Debian/whatever, then stick with that.

I can rollout a hundred machines and make them all the same with one command and just let it roll. Don't have to baby sit. Can you do that with Windows, Mac OS or PCBSD. Nooooo. To do that on Windows you will need Zen Works, SMS or Mirimba. (And making packages on any of those can take forever, if you can even do it cause it's a PAIN in the azz. At least it's easy to make PBI's)

Actually I use Ghost to close on the Windows computers that I setup. Carbon Copy Cloaner (CCC) is great for Macs.

Both of these are much faster because you don't have to wait for anything to download from the web. I've literally had over 50 cloaning at one time by using the same group of 5 five CD that that just have enough into to connect to the network and have it download the image from the network to the computers.

As for ZenWorks, I do use that at work but only to add people to groups in NDS and only if they are a member of group X do they get special apps for that group.

So ... cloaning with Ghost and CCC to make all machines exactly alike for base image. And ZenWorks for group specific applications.